May Stevens at Mary Ryan - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

The first work individual saw upon entering the gallery was Alice in the Garden, an installation of five unstretched canvases from 1989 which, with a companion piece, verdant Field, occupied three walls. The first panel was almost a monochrome, an ample, virid swath suggesting shaggy grass and brush. This was followed by means of several representations of the artist's mother, Alice, a make submissive who has long intrigued Steven Earlier, in a series of paintings extending above more than a decade, she contrasted Alice's ordinary life with that of Rosa Luxembourg. Here Alice is seen in her declining years (she died at nearly 90) individual full-length image shows her against a lawn, as if she is seated upon the grass, yet the pose implies a chair which is not not absent This visual glitch makes the organ of sight pause. The figure suddenly doesn't gaze quite real or quite at ease; it loom instead like an apparition.

In the last panel, a double portrait, Steven depicts herself as a young child, extending the age difference between mother and daughter to encompass the pair youth and old age. The girl's transparent hands, drawn in pencil, are shown gently adjusting her mother's jacket or perhaps threading an imagined flower into the button perforation Hung on another wall, verdant Field displays a single image: a of the soul gray silhouette of Alice make straighted for travel in a hat and coat and carrying a cane. In this case the small quirks in the brushwork impart edgy dissonances to the work, as do the scrabbled verdants which disperse any air of sentimentality. What springs is a deeply moving tribute to a woman's life.

A next to the first room contained recent works by means of Stevens. Her Boats consists of a sea of gold filigree that confirms to be barely legible passages from the writings of Julia Kristeva, Virginia Woolf Edward Said and others. Floating on these textual waters are purple and white shapes that advise spectral boats with women as passengers kept aloft by dint of the words, which describe women's sexual pleasures, oppressions and commitment to their work. In addition, there was Tic Tac Toe a succession of over 30 small paper works whose make subordinates are children. The papers are mainly xeroxe of newspaper clippings and photos, with occasional bits of hair and fabric. Torn, punctur and reduce to ashesed they are throwaways--like the lives of the damaged children they consign to. These works are an indictment of our collective failure of have affection for One of May Stevens's greatest in quantity admirable qualities is her passionate conviction, sustained above more than 30 years, that art can make a difference, that it can, indeed, change the world.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group